If you’ve used Facebook over the past few years to drive traffic to your website – and to generate sales – over the past 12 months you will have probably seen an increase in your efforts. Facebook constantly rolls out new initiatives to make referral traffic easier for users, and have recently introduced another new feature for us: Facebook tagged products.

At the bottom of the status update bar on your business page there will be a new button to tag products within your posts.

Use your Facebook status bar to tag your products.

When you tag a product within a post, it will provide a link directly to that product’s page on your website. Instead of simply appearing as a link, however, it tells your audience that this is the ‘product shown’ within the content. What’s even more exciting is that you can tag up to 30 different products in the one post. Facebook’s intention behind this new feature is to assist businesses with the organic discovery of their products.

A recent tagged product post from Baby Bunting

Facebook has confirmed that they’re currently testing the feature, so it’s only available organically at the moment. But we dare say it won’t be long until they monetise this posting option within the ads manager – so make the most of it while you can.

We’ll be using this feature over the coming weeks to test how tagging products compares to the call to action button and the carousel product posts in driving organic traffic to our clients’ websites.

We anticipate that this new way of driving traffic to your website will exceed the average click-through rates of other types of posts because it’s an immediate call to action. Shoppers can see the price right there on Facebook and the tag even provides information on whether the product is currently on sale. It’s literally an extension of your website.

Note: to access tagged products you must have a catalogue or shop section set up on Facebook. Once you have done this, the option will appear in your status bar.

With that simple message sent at 9:50pm PST on the 21st of March, 2006, Jack Dorsey launched Twitter.

Dorsey was one member of a group of directors of podcasting company Odeo, with the idea for Twitter being a result of a day long brainstorming session. The group made plans to create an online communication tool that replicated the SMS texting experience. Shortened and abbreviated messages with a maximum of 140 characters; communication between two members who both ‘follow’ each other. A soft launch of Twitter was made available for employees of Odeo before it was publicly launched in July, 2006.

Finding it’s Tweet

Although it was replicating the SMS experience, there was no intention for Twitter to be a competitor to texting. And even with direct competition from other social media mediums, at the time Twitter was considered incomparable.

Twitter’s watershed moment came during the 2007 South by Southwest Interactive conference (SXSWi). In the lead up to the event the site was averaging 20,000 ‘tweets’ per day, but this figure tripled to 60,000 after the event due to word of mouth and the clever placement of dual big screen TVs that broadcasted tweets live.

Twitter has brought some unique innovations to the social media sphere. The most popular and well known is the ‘hashtag’, a metadata tag. By placing a hashtag message in your tweet (eg. #twitterparty), your tweet can be found easily by searching that hashtag. This tool is used by people having a shared experience such as watching a new episode of a TV show or attending a sports match.

Loosening the boundaries

The 140 character limit for a tweet has always been a terrific selling point for marketing via Twitter. The restrictions have led to creative teams producing content that is sharp, short and direct. But over time tweets have evolved. Now messages can contain images, GIFs, hyperlinks, videos, to name a few. These multimedia options are vital to increase and maintain client interaction with a message and brand. Unfortunately the adding of multimedia takes up valuable character space, with hyperlinks requiring in some cases dozens of characters to be used. Wisely, Twitter identified this issue and decided to loosen these restrictions. From late May, 2016 any multimedia or link contained in a tweet will not count towards the 140 character limit. This opens up the opportunity to add layered content to a tweet, e.g. a series of links to recipes. In a time when the public is demanding more content than ever this is a very important change for Twitter.

Past, present, future?

Founder Jack Dorsey returned to Twitter as CEO in 2015, tasked with providing a fresh vision of innovation for the company. In March, 2016 he reinforced the core values of Twitter, all of which came about as the medium evolved.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey.

First is the power to connect people during a live event, which has never been more obvious than during US presidential election years. Twitter had a huge increase in membership and activity during the 2008 election, and activity spiked in 2012 and again this year. “The election year has always been good to us: 2008 was a massive, massive year for us, and this is a massive year for us,” Dorsey said.

Secondly is the role of Twitter as an accompaniment to the live event. This interaction with others viewers, journalists and vested interests, as well with the resources they provide, creates a form of augmented reality. The Twitter member is no longer a passive observer but an engaged user.

Lastly Dorsey speaks about the importance of speed. That Twitter can provide information at almost real time – a non-negotiable in today’s day and age – is key to its popularity now and in the future.

Bird’s-eye view of Twitter plans

So what next for the text-based social media giant? In January, 2015 Twitter acquired the live video streaming application Periscope. Periscope enables Twitter accounts to broadcast live video to their followers. Dorsey believes the purchase of this application is aligned with Twitter’s value of event based communication.

“[W]hen there’s a lull, the internet creates something,” said Dorsey. “So what colour is this dress? And then that becomes a live event. Even when there’s nothing happening of note, something is created.”

For example, instead of waiting for a sporting event or election to take place, users can create their own live events using the video streaming function.

A local resident enjoying the Drummond puddle firsthand.

An example of this was the #DrummondPuddleWatch in January, 2016. A Twitter user in Newcastle, UK, live video-streamed a puddle that had formed on a walkway below their window. This innocuous video of Newcastle residents navigating around the bothersome puddle on a dreary day would eventually gather over 650,00 live viewers.

Twitter’s next challenge is to debunk the theory that the medium is a battleground of constant debates and interactions. Being a passive observer means you can get all your news, facts, jokes, offers by following the accounts you want without the aspects of Twitter that do not appeal. Jack Dorsey believes the ‘Moments’ tool, which sorts through the torrent of information coming from your followed accounts and selects the content best suited to the user, is the right direction and strategy to engage fully with passive new users.

Snapchat is one of the youngest platforms in social media but has certainly made an impact on the digital world very quickly. First launched in July 2011 by Evan Spiegel, Bobby Murphy and Reggie Brown under the name of ‘Picaboo’, the inspiration of the platform was finding an answer to sending images to people that you may have later regretted. In September 2011 the platform was rebranded to ‘Snapchat’ and the growth started to snowball.

In October 2013, Mark Zuckerberg offered $3 billion to buy the platform, which was swiftly rejected. In 2014 Snapchat posted revenue of $3 million, in 2015 it rose to $50 million and this year they’re projecting $350 million in revenue. In March 2016 the platform was valued at $16 billion. Wise move rejecting Zuckerberg.

Who snaps?

With over 100 million active users in 2015, users are collectively sending over 9000 snaps a second. In December 2015, 36% of Americans aged 18-29 had an account, and they are reporting over 7 billion video views each day.

Why Snapchat will soon change the way marketers market

It’s authentic

Unlike Facebook and Instagram, Snapchat doesn’t allow you to force your audience to view pushy marketing messages on its platform. So if your brand has no interest in sharing engaging stories with your audience and your only objective is to push product down your customer’s throats, then Snapchat is not for you.

The language Snapchat uses demands authenticity. Instead of a ‘timeline’ or ‘newsfeed’ on Snapchat, you view a person’s or business’s ‘stories’. This playfulness and impermanence forces users to be their true selves and businesses need to follow suit.

Snapchat is easy to use, but it’s hard to be good at. Businesses who master and engage this platform early will be the winners.

It’s real-time two-way communication

All social media allows us to speak directly to our audience, but it doesn’t necessarily allow for two-way communication.

Many corporate Twitter and Facebook accounts will badge themselves as the platform where you can have a real time conversation with a representative from the organisation, but is it an honest and authentic conversation? On many of these accounts you’ll view stock standard responses coming from businesses, but what if customers could snap you a video of their enquiry and they could receive an immediate and custom response via chat or video? Customer service brilliance.

It’s marketing disguised as messaging

Through Snapchat brands are provided a direct line to their customers and, with the recent automation of the ‘Snapchat story’, this almost guarantees your followers will view your content.

Unlike Facebook, Twitter and Instagram there’s no clever algorithm determining what users see; it’s simply delivered to them almost in message form. This again highlights the need for businesses to be authentic and creative with their content because pushy marketing will quickly be viewed as spam and will result in your customers unfollowing you.

So what is planned for the future?

Sharing functionality

Users currently cannot share content they view on Snapchat, but have hinted that this development is on its way. If you were able to ‘re-snap’ images or videos that were sent directly to you, it would almost defeat the original intent of the platform; so we’re predicting that this will be a function of the ‘story’ in the not so distant future.

Analytics

Snapchat won’t give you too much insight into who’s viewing your snaps and their finer demographics, but this will be here soon. With the rise of businesses and influencers paying attention to the platform, this is a natural and important next step.

Snapcodes

A snapcode is Snapchat’s version of a QR code. While the QR may have recently fizzled away, we might see the renaissance of this function via Snapchat to benefit brands by allowing followers to access exclusive offers and events.

While Snapchat has a long way to come if it’s to become the number one social network, the growth and demographics of this platform cannot be ignored. Consider how you can incorporate Snapchat into your social media strategy and the value this could add to your customers’ interaction with your brand.

The last decade has seen countless new players enter the social media landscape. In this evolving environment, YouTube seems to have been unaffected by the change and has kept its position as one of the most popular platforms without having to go through any major transformations. In 2015, the website celebrated its 10-year anniversary, but this year marks a decade since the three founders sold the company to Google and the service truly took off.

Today, YouTube has 1.3 billion unique users every month. This stratospheric number has been achieved by making the decision to keep the platform free and is perhaps best illustrated by the failed attempt to integrate YouTube with Google+ in 2011 – a severe misfire and a lesson in the power of unrestricted access.

Maru is one of the world’s most popular cats on YouTube.

Who uses YouTube?

So, who are these 1.3 billion people? Firstly, not just bored teenagers. The original target group of people aged 12 to 17 has expanded and large quantities of users are today found in all age groups. Second, these 1.3 billion users don’t sit in front of their computers. As a matter of fact, more than 50% of the views on YouTube come from mobile devices. For content creators, this means that you are not making films for a 27-inch monitor, but rather for a 5-inch mobile screen. And third, the users are spread all across the world: 80% of the views are from outside the U.S. This means that uploaded videos instantly reach a global audience.

Even though YouTube offers the traditional features of a social media site – users create, share and exchange information through profiles, comments and groups – it has an exceptional focus on content. When looking at the future of YouTube, this cannot be forgotten. While Twitter and Facebook mainly focus on sharing and engagement of content, YouTube helps create it. Even comments from YouTube users sometimes take the form of videos, a sign of how much more effective and direct the medium of video can be compared to text.

With over 44 million subscribers, PewDiePie is the world’s most influential content producer.

The focus on content – and especially on video content – seems to be required to remain on top on the social media ladder. Predictions show that in just three years time, online video will make up 80% of all internet traffic. That is a lot of traffic. It also means that YouTube should prepare itself for a serious increase in competing services, something that is happening as we speak – notably from Facebook and Snapchat.

With this in mind: what does the future look like for YouTube? Which trends in the development of the platform can be identified?

More types of content

The perception that YouTube has gone through very few changes during the last decade probably comes from the fact that its interface hasn’t changed much. In reality, the service has constantly been evolving. In 2010, the first live streams were transmitted. The same year, a film rental service was introduced. More recent changes have seen the introduction of 360-degrees videos, the music streaming service Music Key and a gaming platform, connecting the rising phenomenon of Let’s Play videos.

A complement to the entertaining content is an increasing amount of educational videos produced by the highest-ranked universities. Expect this shift to an entertainment hub – where users both watch, listen, learn and play – to continue.

Premium services

Unlike other video-sharing websites, the content creators on YouTube are paid. This monetisation of videos has run into problems caused by ad blockers. Users block ads not because they are freeloaders, but because they are frustrated over bad user experiences. Therefore, the rise of ad blockers should be seen as a sign that different monetisation models must be explored. One of YouTube’s ways of battling this is the introduction of the paid subscription service YouTube Red.

Gone are the days when everything on YouTube was accessible. With these content access restrictions, television networks – in the process of moving from traditional broadcasting to video-on-demand – are intrigued by this new way of reaching users. Gone then are the days when YouTube’s competitors solely were Facebook, Vimeo and VK. The divide between video and online video will be harder to detect, meaning YouTube is now also competing with streaming media providers like Netflix and Hulu and large television networks like HBO.

Live and social

For YouTube and its users, there is no long-term gain in viral videos. To keep an audience it is more important to build a narrative with a series of videos, to get people to stay by making them want to hear the next part of the story. Once again, this is not done by tricks or deceptions, but by providing the best possible content – just like NBC’s Must See TV in the 90s.

A big issue expected to arise in the next couple of years is YouTube’s proper integration of live streaming. When will YouTube outbid the giant cable companies and start to stream live sport? This will happen, and when it does it is a pivotal step in taking down the television business as we know it. With the rise of more live content, the community aspect will increase in importance. People will watch the same content at the same time, and they will want to discuss it with other viewers, as it happens. YouTube is, and most certainly will be in the future, a social platform.

Who needs a television to watch the news?

In summary, the next decade of YouTube will see more big players enter the stage. On one hand this can be seen as a narrowing of the product – with less bottom up production, funny clips from individuals will have less impact – on the other hand, it will broaden the platform with the inclusion of games, virtual reality, live sport and a blurred distinction between online content and big television productions.

With both the content creators and the audience moving into this new environment, the advertisers must follow. To be successful, it is necessary to have the courage to step away from traditional ways of marketing through TV, radio and newspapers, and start to see the possibilities of entering the rapidly growing hub of digital entertainment that is YouTube.

We all know the founding story of Facebook, but in case you’re not up to speed, here’s a quick recap:

‘The Facebook’ was founded on 4 February, 2014, in the dorm rooms of Harvard University. Initially its purpose was to allow students to find information on other students of the institution. Within the first month, over half of Harvard’s students were registered on the platform and Zuckerberg decided to make the social network available to other colleges.

In 2006, Zucks opened the platform up to anyone who was 13 years or older who had a valid email address. By late 2007 there were over 20 million users and 100,000 businesses registered on the platform, which sparked the development of a new concept called ‘company pages’. These rolled out in 2009.

The growth of Facebook for individual and business users has been astronomical over the past decade and it is reported that over one billion people are now registered to the platform and over 40 million small businesses have launched a Facebook page.

So how does the future look for Facebook? Will it continue to develop and grow? Of course!

Facebook is a maturing platform and its pattern in demographics proves that. In 2009 only 2.9% of Facebook users were over 55 years old. In 2015 that figure was sitting at 15.6%. What about teenagers though? After all, in 10 years’ time this is who we, as business owners and marketers, will be targeting.

The good news is that, while other platforms are on the rise for the adolescent demographic, Facebook is still the number one site – 71% of teens say they use the site regularly. Furthermore, 41% of those surveyed said that Facebook was their number one choice for social networking, with Instagram and Snapchat growing quickly behind it.

If we look at how Facebook has evolved their offering over the past decade, it’s not hard to see that Zucks and his team are putting plans in place to take over the internet. They want Facebook to be the first website you visit at the start of your day and they don’t want you to leave. The introduction of Facebook stores, video content and instant articles are just a few examples of this. Why would you visit a newspaper’s website when you can just read the news on your Facebook feed? Well played.

So what will Facebook look like in 10 years? Here are a few predictions that Mark Zuckerberg talked through in his recent live fireside chat in Berlin.

10 Year road map for Facebook

Connectivity

Zuckerberg wants to bring the internet to more people and, in turn, more people to Facebook. There are currently 7 billion people in the world and only 3 billion of them are connected to the internet. Zuckerberg wants to work with the relevant companies to bend the curve in who is connected online and is hopeful that, by 2025, 3 billion will be sitting closer to 7 billion.

Artificial Intelligence

In the next 10 years, Facebook wants to “build systems that are better than people at perception”. At the moment, the challenge is ‘unsupervised learning,’ where machines can infer what they don’t know about and have no positive or negative reinforcement for providing a solution. That’s a bigger picture problem though, and Facebook is focusing its attention on voice recognition, self driving cars and bot software.

Facebook wants to build true human-like interactions between man and machine. It will be able to interpret intent from natural language and develop over time. An example is, when you type ‘I’m hungry’ a bot can pick that up and offer to order you the sandwich that you always get from your local sandwich bar. You will no longer need to find your customers, a bot will literally delver them to you. Madness.

Virtual and augmented reality

Zuckerberg: “I think virtual reality has the potential to be the most social platform, because you feel like you’re right there with the person.” Preceding this, he had shown a video of two people playing a game in the same VR room, yet neither of them were anywhere near each other while they were playing. Weird!

Mark Zuckerberg wears an Oculus Rift virtual reality headset

Zuckerberg admits that VR and AR are still at least 10 years off, but similar to the mainstream introduction of the smartphone, they expect that the update will be a game changer.

Facebook is currently the most dominant player in social media and its future plans are to ensure that this doesn’t change. It is continuously growing the user base and constantly working to offer users more features and functionality so users never have to leave the site.

And just remember, while Zuckerberg’s top three predictions for the future may seem a little out of reach for your business at the moment, in 2006 so was the prospect of a smartphone.

The Facebook-owned photo- and video-sharing network said in an email to SocialTimes that Taco Bell, ASOS, Macy’s and Airbnb are among the advertisers involved in the beta-test, and the feature will be made more widely available “in the coming weeks.”

Instagram carousel ads can still contain three to five pieces of content, both photos and videos, and the maximum length for videos is 60 seconds.

Global head of business and brand development James Quarles said in an email to SocialTimes:

The hardest thing to do is capture a consumer’s imagination. The immersive nature of sequential video allows people to quickly learn if the brand is for you and whether it fits your life.

If you’re an Instagram user, over the past few days you will have seen the countless posts asking you to ‘turn me on’. We say, don’t do it!On March 15, 2016 Instagram announced that they’re making changes to their algorithm. These changes will prioritise the content you’re more likely to enjoy, instead of images posted in chronological order as it has been in the past.

Individuals and businesses have gone crazy over the past few days, posting images encouraging their followers to turn on their notifications. If you have taken their advice, you’re probably going to regret it.

While we all love Katy Perry, she posts photos on Instagram multiple times a day. Turning on notifications would be like receiving a text message from her every single time she posts. Now imagine that happening with multiple people you follow. Our lives are noisy enough; we don’t need this.

People have been up in arms about similar changes made to Facebook years ago and now they are tarring the changes to Instagram with the same brush – but it is so different. Why? The changes to Facebook were made to business pages. This ensured that users’ newsfeeds were not overtaken by marketing messages, which, when you think about it, we should all be grateful for. The difference with Instagram is that business pages don’t exist. You either have an Instagram account or you don’t; therefore we’re all on a level playing field and this is literally about giving you quality content.

Changing the Instagram feed from chronological order to related content will only help people and businesses who have superior content marketing strategies. If you’re giving your audience what they want, then your content will be prioritised in their newsfeed, and if they come online five hours after you have posted, they will see it. How good is that?

These changes will sort the strategists from the pretenders and will make our Instagram feeds more relevant. Spend less time worrying that your audience will no longer see your content and spend more time focusing on how to deliver them what they want to see, and you can’t lose.

Don’t turn on our notifications, because while you think these changes are annoying, it won’t be as annoying as your phone beeping every single time we post.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but does the definition of the internet sound more like social media in 2016?

With over 3.4 billion people worldwide accessing the internet, 2.3 billion are using it to access social media sites. This figure is growing annually by 10%. So here’s my question:

Why don’t we stop calling it social media and just call it the internet?

There are many views about when exactly social media began. Some contend it started in the 1800s, while others say that social started with email back in 1966. From our perspective, the start of the (r)evolution began in 1996 when Six Degrees was launched as the first ‘modern’ social network.

Six Degrees was, at the time, unique of its kind. It allowed users to create a profile and become friends with other users. Its sole purpose was to encourage people to be ‘social’, and, therefore, it was labelled a social network.

Six Degrees was the first modern social network

The evolution since 1996 has been prolific; we’ve been introduced to Wikipedia, Friendster, MySpace, LinkedIn, Flickr, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, Instagram, Pinterest and Vine. The list goes on. Some of these platforms have crashed, but the ones that have evolved have claimed the internet.

Social media in 2016 allows you do almost everything you need. Yes, we still use it to ‘social network’, but consider all of the other things you use social media for. To clarify our point, the below image paints a picture of what sites are currently defined as ‘social media’.

Social media in 2016

How often do you start your online browsing outside of a social media platform? I’d suggest a lot of us start the day on Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat or Instagram and find ourselves navigating elsewhere from there.

Facebook is changing every day to ensure they are continuing to deliver their users what they go on the internet for: the introduction of stores on Facebook allows us to shop; instant articles allow us to read the news faster than ever before; and video uploads allow us to watch and share the news as it happens.

Photographers and film producers no longer need websites because they have platforms like Instagram, Tumbler and Flickr that make their images look better than any website ever could. What’s more is that they can reach their target market in that exact spot. You don’t have to leave.

Major retailers are using social platforms as another avenue of service, with customers able to talk to a staff member in real time.

Sports teams are using social media to livestream their training sessions and media events, giving their fans opportunities like never before.

Politicians are using social media to gain support and showcase their policies, or using it to highlight the holes in their opponents’ policies.

Yes, there are still things that we cannot do on social media, like banking, insurance claims and grocery shopping … yet. But there will come a time when this is a reality. Other than Google, social media sites are more popular than any other site on the internet and one day we’ll stop referring to them as ‘social media’ and just call it the internet.

Let’s be honest: we all know what Instagram is and how it helps us common folk share our photos with the world. Not to mention how it allows us to look that little bit more attractive with its flattering filters.We follow our friends on Instagram to keep up with their lives and we follow celebrities so we can admire their lavish lifestyles.

When Facebook acquired Instagram in April 2012 for US$1 billion, the platform had 30 million users. Today, over 400 million people actively use Instagram on a monthly basis.

And with over 400 million users, chances are your target market is on Instagram.

Instagram statistics – January 2016

Major brands in Australia are seeing the benefits of Instagram for business and they are cashing in, and some are doing it very well.

A study recently commissioned by Japanese app Takumi found that Instagram delivers more sales and consumer actions than any other social platform.68 per cent of people 18-24 years old claimed that they are more inclined to purchase something after someone they followed on Instagram shared it. But why is that?

Instagram is a beautiful, sophisticated and aspirational community and through images it provides businesses the opportunity to develop a trusting relationship with their customers.

Content

Content is easy because the best content is user generated content (UGC). This is how communities are built. Instagram provides you with the opportunity to search for the content your customers are posting, engage with them via that content and then share their beautiful photos via your business profile.

The feeling of appreciation that this sharing facilitates goes both ways, with followers developing a sense of participation in your profile and the content you’re delivering. This is what builds customer relationships and engenders brand loyalty to your business.The type of content you want to be sharing are your products being used in everyday life. Consumers can relate to these images; not the product sitting on a shelf in your store, or catalogue images your suppliers have sent. The aspirational element of Instagram drives this. Give your audience content to aspire to.

But what if you have killer content and no followers, how do you get your content seen? Hashtags!

Hashtags are the conduit in the Instagram community. They are the easiest way to allow users to search for images they’re interested in and they are also the best way for you to get your content seen by your audience. Use hashtags that are specific to your brand, but also use ones that are generic to the products you’re selling. This is the most effective way for you to reach a community of followers already interested in what your business offers.

Finding the right balance with your hashtags is important. While you need to ensure you are not overloading your posts with irrelevant tags for the sake of more unrelated engagement, you also need to use enough tags to ensure your content is seen by the correct audience. Failure to use hashtags at all basically renders your content as private. Be sure to find the right balance for your business.

Analytics

Like most marketing efforts, the end goal of your Instagram posts is to generate more leads or sales, and the best way to do that is to drive the traffic through to your website. This part, though, may not be as easy as it seems. Instagram have designed their platform to keep you there. You cannot use links in the description of the photos you upload to Instagram. Rather, you can only use one URL in the bio of your account. The limitations on links renders your bio prime real estate. Treat it that way and make sure you’re using it.

As with any digital marketing, we want to see the fruits of our labour and determine how much traffic we’re generating from Instagram to our website. Again, no easy feat. Instagram is designed to keep you there. Instagram users will not appear on your Google analytics as traffic generated through Instagram. Instead, these visitors are categorised as direct traffic. To overcome this, be sure to use a Google URL in your bio; you can even run it through Bitly to make it look a little prettier.

The future looks bright for Instagram, with over 55 per cent of internet users between 18 and 29 years old using the platform regularly. This is only set to increase in the immediate future with marketers forecast to spend over $1.48 billion in advertising across the platform in 2016 and $2.81 billion in 2017, so as this market matures rapidly, don’t get left behind!

Social media has evolved at an incredible pace. New social networking sites are introduced regularly, algorithms change, audiences mature and every brand on earth is searching for the next piece of viral content.

Social media advertising has allowed marketers to ‘fake it ‘till you make it.’ You can pay a couple of bucks and you’ll get more likes, follows and video views and, on the surface, it will appear as though you’re winning. But it’s all in vain.

So often we hear companies defining success in social media as the amount of followers they have or bemoaning that their competitors are doing a better job on social because of the size of their Facebook audience.

We need to stop this.

A winning social media strategy is one that aims to amplify your victory metrics, not your vanity ones. So if you want to reap the benefits of social media for your business, these are the four pillars that Avinash Kaushik recommends should be supporting your digital strategy.

Conversation Rate

The conversation rate measures how much conversation your content is generating on its respective social network. Measuring this requires you to listen to your audience and pay attention to the content driving conversation. Your conversation rate can be measured across all social media sites; it’s simply the number of comments you receive on a post on Facebook, comments on a photo on Instagram, replies to your blog and responses to tweets. Easy.

Online communities are built on conversation. It gives you the opportunity to understand your audience by participating in the conversation and in return increasing a metric which matters.

The math is simple: the fewer comments you receive, the less your content is engaging and connecting with your audience.

You can measure conversation per post, but for the purpose of monthly reporting you can:Total number of comments / total number of posts = Average monthly conversation rate. Our recommendation is to provide the average as well as the top three performing pieces of content for the month.

Amplification Rate

Whether you have 300,000 or three followers, you have a social network. What’s even better is that each of those followers also has a social network of their own that you can access. If you provide engaging content, your audience will want to share, retweet, repost or regram it. This is amplification.

If your business can amplify your content, you’re not only reaching potentially thousands more people, but you can rest assured that you’re providing your audience with content of value, content they believe they need to share with their network. All of a sudden, your likes and follows are growing; not because you’re paying for them, but because your audience sees your value. That is a relationship no social media marketing dollar can buy.

To measure amplification:

FacebookNumber of shares per post.

TwitterNumber of retweets per tweet.

YouTubeNumber of video shares.

BlogNumber of blog shares.

InstagramNumber of regram / mentions.

Applause Rate

Applause rate helps us understand how our audience feels about our content. Is your Instagram photo visually appealing enough to encourage your audience to double tap the screen? Do people relate to your tweet enough to be persuaded to tap that little love heart? Measure it.

What has given the applause rate metric more depth recently is the introduction of Facebook Reactions. These reactions allows Facebook users to express laughter, amazement, sadness or anger at content, while the old-school ‘like’ has been paired up with a ‘love.’ We can now actually report on exactly how our content makes our audience feel.

To measure applause rate:

FacebookOn a graph, represent the number and type of reactions

TwitterNumber of favourites on tweets

YouTubeNumber of likes on videos

BlogNumber of likes on blogs

InstagramNumber of likes on photos

Economic Value

Economic value of social media is what every business wants to see. Whether you’re operating an ecommerce site or a blog, you can measure the value of referrals to your website from social networks.

Google analytics allows you to view the amount of revenue generated from any social media site and this is the data that will keep your boss happy. The ultimate goal of any marketing activity is to generate more leads and convert them to sales. Google analytics can easily measure that. If you’re not running an ecommerce site, google analytics will allow you to set macro and micro goals, which can be referred directly from your social media networks. These will provide an economic value per click that you can then report directly on.

A macro goal is the end product that you want the referral to complete, whether this is a sale or a sign up for a webinar. A micro level goal is everything in between: researching the product, reading about the company or signing up for a newsletter. Everything is trackable and everything has an economic value.

So there you have it, the four victory metrics that will always be honest about your content.

Let’s remember what social media is: it’s ‘social’ media. It’s there for businesses to build a community and engage with their customers and this is what we, as marketers, should be focused on growing. Stop being vain with your metrics; likes, followers and subscribers don’t matter anymore. It’s not the community with the most people that wins, it’s the community with the most meaningful voice.